


Daughter of the New Dawn

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Death, F/M, Gen, Sibling Incest, not a happy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-29 14:59:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU in which Túrin wakes up at Cabed-en-Aras, and thus both he and Niënor survive and know the other’s true identity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daughter of the New Dawn

“Turambar. T - Túrin?”

The voice filtered through his semi-concious mind. It sounded, he thought, a little like his mother’s voice. But no, it could not be…

“Túrin… son of Húrin? Túrin. Wake up.  _Please._ ”

The voice was louder now, and more insistent. He opened his eyes, and a pale, frightened face began to swim into view, framed by golden hair, damp from the spray.

“Níniel” he rasped, sitting up as relief washed over him. “You should not be here.”

It was only then that he realised.

“Wait…  _what did you call me?_ ”

 ——-

“After I have had the child” she had announced, her voice brittle but her head held high “then we will go to find mother… and father. If we can.”

“Yes.”

“Everything will be better then.”

“Yes.”

(He did not believe this for a moment; he knew she did not either.)

“It will be like a new day. A fresh start. We will make for our child as happy and safe a life as we can, given the… circumstances.”

“Of course we will, Níniel.”

 ——- 

The child was a girl, with her mother’s golden hair.

“Auriel. Her name is Auriel” said Niënor, cradling the child, gently stroking her brow where a small frown was gathered, in dreams. But there was a slight catch in her voice as she said it that gave Túrin a sense of foreboding.

Auriel grew older, and yet they stayed in Brethil. Their daughter was a lively child, if small for her age, inquisitive and quick to laugh. It was with a pang that Túrin realised that she looked more like Lalaith with every passing day. (He had thought that particular wound had healed over long ago, or at least the pain was dulled; how naïve he had been, he realised.) He did not voice this thought to Niënor. 

——-

Sicknesses came and went, plagues from the north like those that had been rife in Hithlum when he was a child.

It was not, in the end, one of these sicknesses that killed her.

“It’s her heart” said Brandir, his face twisting in pain as if Auriel were his own daughter. “Sometimes… with children of close kin…” he shrugged, uselessly, his brown eyes soft and sympathetic as he looked at Niënor, his manner solicitous and a little uncomfortable.

Some days a heavy black mist of rage fell over Túrin. On these days, he looked at Gurthang in its scabbard and longed to draw it, run its blade across Brandir’s throat, end the simpering compassion that he knew he did not deserve. Do something, get up and run away from Brethil, far away. Anything to feel alive. He never acted on these compulsions. Instead he held his daughter close, stroking her golden curls, and listening to the irregular, fluttering heartbeats, wondering how many more were left to her.

——-

Túrin’s cheeks were slick with tears, his eyes puffy and red. Niënor’s face was dry and bone-white. Perhaps, he thought, she had cried every tear she would ever cry, and there was nothing left. Perhaps there were only so many tears in a person, and then one ran out? (If only that were true, he thought bitterly.)

They sat for a long time, their foreheads and the tips of their fingers touching lightly, locked in their own private world of grief together. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, made husky by disuse.

“Now comes the night.”

**Author's Note:**

> The direct quote “Now comes the night” is, of course, among Túrin’s last words in the canon version.


End file.
